Were the 60's a waste of time and energy?

[which doctor]

It's common, both in IRL and on this board, to invoke the imagery of sixties radicalism, including both the West Coast and French varieties, among others. Perhaps one of the most vivid examples of this is more recent version of SDS, which takes the name and symbolism of one of the most important radical student organizations in the US. But the original SDS was a disaster, and from the break-up you got all the crazy groups like the RCP, Weather Underground, Progressive Labor, etc. I can't understand why anyone would want to repeat that mistake again. There's also the frequent invocation to 'recreate May '68', which in reality was doomed from its beginning as well. I'll shamefully admit to once invoking situationist imagery and catchwords, so I understand the tempation, but I think it's one that needs to be reconsidered.

In some senses, the sixties were an even more confused time than we have today; you had the post-'56 confusion over Stalinism, the Sino-Soviet split, Prague Spring, natl. liberation movements, etc. The left in the sixties may have been more vocal than the left is nowadays, but that doesn't change that fact that the sixties left was an inadequate response to the situation, and invoking it today is to make an even bigger mistake. Perhaps if the left wasn't so keen on always repeating its own failures, we'd actually get somewhere.

[Die Neue Zeit]

New Left idiocy run amok!

[RadioRaheem84]

Well I had always thought that the public's perception of society was cut off way too fast and this probably caused the big counter culture and it's demise into blatant hedonism and opportunism. I mean growing up in a rather repressive culture that was racist, flag waving and full of hypocrisy was too much for the people to take.

I think that people now have a better grip on that but they take their cynicism out with apathy and self indulgence. The spirit of the sixties and seventies is needed again but this time it needs to be followed through like in the thirties when the labor movement was at it's peak.

[Prairie Fire]

You're absolutely right. The sixties was an enormous waste of time, what with the whole "Ending the War in Vietnam" thing. Certainly the actions of millions in the United States and abroad had no bearing on the outcome of the American war in IndoChina.

I'm also quite certain that the masses of the American anti-war movement among both military persynelle and the masses of American people had absolutely no bearing what-so ever on the end of formal conscription in the United States in 1973 (Economic pressures that push many into service persist, but the systematic draft of American civilians into military service is, at this time, a thing of the past).

And that whole "civil rights" thing. Sheesh, what did that ever accomplish, eh?

The social programs among the Black Panther party that fed hundreds of thousands, provided clothing, medical care, legal aid, etc... again, just a sectarian manifestation of the Sino-Soviet split, completely irrelevent in any tangible sort of way.

:rolleyes:

Okay, seriously though, In a way I kind of understand what you are trying to say. There are good criticisms to be made of the forces and leadership at the time, especially how the majority got diverted into Woodstock, "free love" and psycadelic drugs, and there are valid criticisms to be made of the alleged revolutionary forces at the time (ie. SDS, Black Panthers, Weathermen, RCP, Young Lords, AIM, PLP, etc,etc).

Still, to deny the tangible victories that came out of the sixties, even in the form of concessions from the bourgeois state, is completely un-acceptable.

Also, it is ethnocentrism to define the sixties in terms of what was going on in Paris and in the the Bay area. May I remind you, there was also that thing in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and several similar things taking place all over Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Carribean, Parts of Europe, etc, etc. To focus on May'68, as so many of the juvenile left do, and ignore the building of societies on a new basis taking place in various countries at the time, is part of the flaw in your outlook.


I also don't think it is fair to blame the forces at the time completely for their failures.

Yes, many of their failures are their own, and this especially goes for the largely student based movements in the US and France (what do you expect, when the leadership are petty bourgeois and have absolutely no experience with working class politics?), but to deny the active role of the various states and their military and intelligence agancies, working in tandem to neutralize and crush this uprising is a huge over-sight.

Many of the most capable leadership that came out of the sixties were imprisoned, and some were outright murdered. This is to be expected when things come to a boiling point in the revolutionary situation in a country, but my point is that the vital role of suppression played by reactionary forces during the sixties can not be over-looked as a deciding factor in the over-all outcome.

As I said, criticisms could be made of almost all of the peoples fighting forces around the world at that time, from the tiniest organization up to those revolutionaries that had siezed state power. Feel free to make these criticisms, but to say that the experiences and upheavals of the Sixties-Seventies should not have happened is absolutely absurd.

We could just as soon say the same things about the period of 2001-2006, with the general upheaval that the Bush era brought (including the largest coordinated protests in humyn history, worldwide), and the lack of real change that came out of it. But is that really the stance for a revolutionary to take? If the revolution was un-successful, then the attempt should never have been made in the first place?

The Cubans, as you may know, celebrate "Moncada day", which is the anniversary of the attack by Fidel Castro and his forces on the Moncada Barracks in Cuba. Now, as you may also know, that operation ended in disaster. Several of those who staged the attack were killed the process, and Castro was sentenced to prison time.

So, why is the aniversary of this military failure a national holiday in Cuba? Was it not equally a waste of time, energy, and humyn lives?

The Cubans don't look at it that way; to them, successful or not, it was the first stage in the revolutionary war against the Batista regime that culminated in the defeat of the dictator and their total victory in Cuba.

Perhaps a similar outlook on the experience of the sixties and seventies would be useful rather than defeatist, hmmm? Feel free to make tactical and theoretical criticisms, as I do,and as many forces at the time did, but pessimism is unwaranted.

[GPDP]

Was the Left of the 60's problematic in terms of outlook and revolutionary potential? Yes, I would agree. But to cast that decade off as a "waste of time" is nothing short of absurd. Without the struggles that took place in that turbulent decade, we would not have progressed to the point that we have in terms of the struggle for racial and gender equality, as well as concessions given to the working class.

Indeed, it is bourgeois commentators and politicians like our "radical Marxist" president Barack Obama that decry the "excesses" of the 60's, and wish we would move past the mindset born of the struggles that took place within that decade so we can get back to business as usual. And to that, I say they can promptly fuck off. A single student activist during the 60's did more to further the cause of mankind than all of Obama's lectures and political campaigns combined.

[which doctor]

Without the struggles that took place in that turbulent decade, we would not have progressed to the point that we have in terms of the struggle for racial and gender equality, as well as concessions given to the working class.
You really think we've progressed since then?

[GPDP]

You really think we've progressed since then?

Obviously nowhere near the extent I would've liked, but nevertheless some good things came out of those struggles. Certainly enough for me to perish the thought that all those struggles amounted to absolutely nothing.

[Devrim]

Were the 60's a waste of time and energy?

To be honest, I don't think that it is the 60's we should even be talking about when we talk about 1968. It may seem a strange thing to say, but much as Hobsbawm talks about 'the short Twentieth Century (1914-1989)' in the age of extremes, I think it makes much more sense of place the events of 1968 in a 'long 1970s (1968-1981)'*.

In this way 1968 is seen as the beginning of a short period in history where the mass strike, and thus potentially, revolution returned to the historical agenda. To put it simply, the working class returned to the central stage of history.

Movements do not happen in national isolation. The revolution of 1848 had a pan-European character. The October revolution was the high point of a wave of struggle which shook capitalism internationally in the period 1917-23. I think that we can see a period of massive workers struggles opening with the events of May in 1968, and finishing with the defeat of the working class in Iran in 1979, and the mass strike in Poland in 1981, with many important events in between, the 'hot Autumn in Italy', the Winter of discontent' in the UK to name one of the major ones, and one in an English language speaking country.


But the original SDS was a disaster, and from the break-up you got all the crazy groups like the RCP, Weather Underground, Progressive Labor, etc.

A lot of the left obsesses about itself, and what it is doing, not what the working class is doing. All of these sort of groups remind me a bit of when I first met the Turkish anarchist exiles from the 1980 coup in London. They would talk about the period in great length about what they were doing, and then mention that "Oh, and there was a massive coal miners strike at the time too".


You're absolutely right. The sixties was an enormous waste of time, what with the whole "Ending the War in Vietnam" thing. Certainly the actions of millions in the United States and abroad had no bearing on the outcome of the American war in IndoChina.

I'm also quite certain that the masses of the civilian anti-war movement among both military persynelle and the masses of American people had absolutely no bearing what-so ever on the end of formal conscription in the United States in 1973 (Economic pressures that push many into service persist, but the systematic draft of American civilians into military service is, at this time, a thing of the past).

And that whole "civil rights" thing. Sheesh, what did that ever accomplish, eh?

The social programs among the Black Panther party that fed hundreds of thousands, provided clothing, medical care, legal aid, etc... again, just a sectarian manifestation of the Sino-Soviet split, completely irrelevent in any tangible sort of way.

This is a case in point, Prairie Fire discusses the period, mentions various 'popular struggles', and talks about the activities of a small leftist group like the Black Panthers. It doesn't at all mention workers struggles such as the 11,000,000 French workers who struck in May 1968, or the 440,000,000 hours lost to strikes in Italy the following year.


Okay, seriously though, In a way I kind of understand what you are trying to say. There are good criticisms to be made of the forces and leadership at the time, especially how the majority got diverted into Woodstock, "free love" and psycadelic drugs, and there are valid criticisms to be made of the alleged revolutionary forces at the time (ie. SDS, Black Panthers, Weathermen, RCP, Young Lords, AIM, PLP, etc,etc).

Then it gets even more obscure in the leftist groups it talks about. I had never heard of some of these. The revolutionary force in society is the working class, not groups of intellectual voluntarists.


Also, it is ethnocentrism to define the sixties in terms of what was going on in Paris and in the the Bay area.

This seems to be a bit rich to me coming from somebody who spent the opening five paragraphs of her post going on about tiny groups in America.


May I remind you, there was also that thing in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos,

Workers were dying on behalf of rival imperialisms.


Yes, many of their failures are their own, and this especially goes for the largely student based movements in the US and France (what do you expect, when the leadership are petty bourgeois and have absolutely no experience with working class politics?), but to deny the active role of the various states and their military and intelligence agancies, working in tandem to neutralize and crush this uprising is a huge over-sight.

I don't know much about what was going on in the US at the time. To characterise what went on in France, which was the biggest mass strike in history involving over two thirds of the country's workforce as a 'largely student based movement'seems a little strange to me. No, actually, it doesn't. It seems quite consistent with your political approach of ignoring the working class completely.


In some senses, the sixties were an even more confused time than we have today; you had the post-'56 confusion over Stalinism, the Sino-Soviet split, Prague Spring, natl. liberation movements, etc.

I suppose it depends how you look at this. I think that we can call the 'post-'56 confusion over Stalinism' as a move towards understanding within the working class, and its political minorities. Before 1956 there was very little 'confusion' about it at all because the counter-revolution was dominant, and there was virtually no communist alternative to Stalinism. The fact that people started to question it was a positive thing. The other thing about the period opening in 1968 is that it also sees the re-emergence of communist politics, which had been lost for decades after the triumph of the Stalinist counter revolution, but this post is long enough already, so I will leave it for another.

Devrim

*Of course many of the dates for periods given in the post are arbitrary, as they must be when making 'periodisations' of this type. In Western history the 'Modern Era' tends to open in 1492 with the West's discovery of the Americas, whereas in Turkish history it opens in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople. The period of the revolutionary wave after World War I, is generally given as 1917-1921 or 1923, but could it be extended a little each way, for example to 1937 to include to movements in Spain? Possibly yes, the point is not to put history into boxes, but to understand tendencies.

[Bonobo1917]

I agree with Devrim's contribution in essence. I would add a few things. The Sixties saw a, partly succesful, struggle (or beginnings of struggle) for democratic and personal rights which, I would suggest, we should critically defend and extend: civil rights, women's rights, the gay and lesbian rights. I, for one, would prefer NOT te be chased right back into the closet, which was where I would be if I were an adolescent before the Stonewall rebellion in which gay people rioted against an police attack against an gay bar in New York City (the beginning of modern gay liberation, and very much part of the Sixties).

Also, let's nog forget who, during his campaign for the French presidency, promised to roll back the heritage of 1968: Sarkozy. Our enemies HATE the Sixties. We should critically defend them, using them as a springboard for further struggle.

[Psy]

There's also the frequent invocation to 'recreate May '68', which in reality was doomed from its beginning as well. I'll shamefully admit to once invoking situationist imagery and catchwords, so I understand the tempation, but I think it's one that needs to be reconsidered.

Actually Paris May '68 had a decent chance of succeeding, you had a massive labor movement (much larger then that in Russia in 1917) and the Paris police force got so broken the French state was preparing to flee to the FRG (West Germany) and abandon the France to the revolution as most of the French state thought it had already lost to the revolution.

May '68 failed because it was only half a revolution, they broke the back of the state, then accepted reforms offered by the French bourgeoisie state.

[Bilan]

The idea that May 68 was "doomed" from the start is absolutely ridiculous.

[A.R.Amistad]

To focus on May'68, as so many of the juvenile left do, and ignore the building of societies on a new basis taking place in various countries at the time, is part of the flaw in your outlook.


Ah, Stalinist infantilism at its finest :rolleyes: so, screw worker's movements in industrial nations? We have to wait for a call from the third world, even if the industrial nations are closer to a worker's revolution?

[the last donut of the night]

I sometimes find that the Left's discussion of the 60's is largely ethnocentric, because apparently there was only struggle in the US and France. May I remind you all of the student struggles in Brazil of the late 60s?

[which doctor]

The idea that May 68 was "doomed" from the start is absolutely ridiculous.
How so? Do you really consider 1968 to be a revolutionary moment, on par for instance, with 1917-1923?

At least with regards to the student movements of the time, the idea was to eschew any sort of theoretical approach, and replace it with actionism and the 'politics of desire,' as if all it took was for people to want to live another way. And as a result of this, these movements were grounded in their own immediacy from the very beginning, unable to imagine what historical potential they had in the future, mostly because there wasn't anything to look forward to. You can construct all the 'situations' you want, but at the end of the day reification is not something that can be escaped, and capitalism is going to continue unchecked.

[Bilan]

How so? Do you really consider 1968 to be a revolutionary moment, on par for instance, with 1917-1923?

Such a comparison is pointless. It was a revolutionary age. Did it have the same potential as 1917-23? Who knows? The movement was bogged down by numerous different issues, and was severely limited by trade unions, the official communist parties, pacifism and a bourgeois analysis of war.

May 68 (for example) had the potential to break this influence by actively fighting against these limitations. The fact that it lost illustrates problems within the movement (particularly, the inability to organise in such a fashion wherein the working class could continue its offensive against capitalism).
May 68 taught us a lesson. It was, for that very reason, indispensable.
To say it was a waste of time is beyond stupid, and presumes that we will be able to smash capitalism without any defeats: an idea that is beyond utopian: it is just stupid.



At least with regards to the student movements of the time, the idea was to eschew any sort of theoretical approach, and replace it with actionism and the 'politics of desire,' as if all it took was for people to want to live another way. And as a result of this, these movements were grounded in their own immediacy from the very beginning, unable to imagine what historical potential they had in the future, mostly because there wasn't anything to look forward to. You can construct all the 'situations' you want, but at the end of the day reification is not something that can be escaped, and capitalism is going to continue unchecked.

Yes, these were problems, but the movement superseded the ideas of the students.

[Psy]

How so? Do you really consider 1968 to be a revolutionary moment, on par for instance, with 1917-1923?

At least with regards to the student movements of the time, the idea was to eschew any sort of theoretical approach, and replace it with actionism and the 'politics of desire,' as if all it took was for people to want to live another way. And as a result of this, these movements were grounded in their own immediacy from the very beginning, unable to imagine what historical potential they had in the future, mostly because there wasn't anything to look forward to. You can construct all the 'situations' you want, but at the end of the day reification is not something that can be escaped, and capitalism is going to continue unchecked.
Yet the students was not really the vanguard of May 1968 they just happened to be the spark that set a labor uprising off. Do you honestly think the over 10 million French workers was following the students in May 1968? The truth is the workers (that was center of the movement) had no leadership so like in Winnipeg Canada 1919 the workers stop short of taking over the state. If there was real vanguard that focused the 10 million workers towards replacing the bourgeoisie state with a workers state it would have been ended very differently.

The French workers was on the right track by taking over their factories and hanging red flags over them and just had to take it to the next step and take over government buildings and hang red flags over them too (okay not that simple but you know what I mean).

[Glenn Beck]

It's too bad we didn't have more people like which doctor back in the 60s

[Raúl Duke]

May 68 (for example) had the potential to break this influence by actively fighting against these limitations. The fact that it lost illustrates problems within the movement (particularly, the inability to organise in such a fashion wherein the working class could continue its offensive against capitalism).
May 68 taught us a lesson. It was, for that very reason, indispensable. In a sense, I agree. One has to see May '68 as a revolt that took place in a modern first world country (which at the time wasn't exactly under an economic depression and sections of the working class had a good standard of living in my understanding) that had potential. To understand how it failed might provide us some insight that could be valuable to avoid those mistakes that might end up re-appearing in this day and age plus give us a background to consider new strategy and such (although things might be changing a bit: I remember reading reports that it's working college students and newly graduates who are under a lot of economic pressure and see little promise in the future compared to older working class persons in labor unions and such and also declining new membership into unions, at least in the U.S.).

[Die Neue Zeit]

In this way 1968 is seen as the beginning of a short period in history where the mass strike, and thus potentially, revolution returned to the historical agenda. To put it simply, the working class returned to the central stage of history.

Don't be ridiculous. The mass strike fetish doesn't help worker struggles politically.

I know you left-coms here want to talk about the mass wildcat strike of 1968, but:


Actually Paris May '68 had a decent chance of succeeding, you had a massive labor movement (much larger then that in Russia in 1917) and the Paris police force got so broken the French state was preparing to flee to the FRG (West Germany) and abandon the France to the revolution as most of the French state thought it had already lost to the revolution.

May '68 failed because it was only half a revolution, they broke the back of the state, then accepted reforms offered by the French bourgeoisie state.

The wildcat strikers had no coherent form of alternative authority and accompanying bureaucracy (of course not the same hacks running the French state). There was no revolutionary strategy of organizing the class well before this spontaneous fetish occurred.

France 1968: Could the working class have taken power? (http://vimeo.com/6215976) Hell no!

[Bilan]

Don't be ridiculous. The mass strike fetish doesn't help worker struggles politically.

There is no fetish of the mass strike. That is an outrageous mischaracterisation.



I know you left-coms here want to talk about the mass wildcat strike of 1968, but:


There's a reason for that: because it is relevant. The pinnacle of the struggle in the 60's was in 1968.

The reason the uprising in 68 was so valuable was that the failings of 68 gave us further knowledge of the struggle. That is valuable.



The wildcat strikers had no coherent form of alternative authority and accompanying bureaucracy (of course not the same hacks running the French state). There was no revolutionary strategy of organizing the class well before this spontaneous fetish occurred.


What I presume you mean to say is that because the working class was unable to organise itself into a party which could continue it's offensive against the bourgeoisie; against the forces of repression; because of the inability to counter the misinformation spread by the unions; because of the misinformation spread by the communist party; because of the inability of the movement to combat this, and bring the struggle forward, the movement did not succeed.

The lack of clarity, and the lack of organised intervention by communists was problematic. But in a lot of ways, to be expected.

What 68 demonstrated was the possibility of revolution. It's short comings demonstrated what we need to focus on. It's criticisms showed what we need to correct.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Waste of time? Two of the more significant working class actions of the past half-century took place during the 60's (May '68 in France and the "Hot Autumn" and subsequent strike actions in Italy). I'd say that there was a lot to be learned from that particular decade.

Did they result in socialism/communism? No, but neither did the soviet experiment, and I doubt that anyone here would call the 1910's a waste of time.

[Psy]

The wildcat strikers had no coherent form of alternative authority and accompanying bureaucracy (of course not the same hacks running the French state). There was no revolutionary strategy of organizing the class well before this spontaneous fetish occurred.

France 1968: Could the working class have taken power? (http://vimeo.com/6215976) Hell no!

That does not mean one could not have developed through revolution, for example if the French Army became a revolutionary army like the French state feared the militant soldiers would have known enough to take over the state with their arms and we would have at least gotten another Paris commune.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I'm placing my stakes on a hypothetically class-strugglist but rev-centrist PCF.


There's a reason for that: because it is relevant. The pinnacle of the struggle in the 60's was in 1968.

The reason the uprising in 68 was so valuable was that the failings of 68 gave us further knowledge of the struggle. That is valuable.

The only knowledge and lessons to be taken from this is that the mass strike strategy just doesn't work.

Had it not been for its reformism, the PCF could have taken advantage of the mass strike, but that would have been because of its earlier "voluntarist" Kautskyan organization of the working class well before the wildcat frenzy, something which you left-coms reject.


What I presume you mean to say is that because the working class was unable to organise itself into a party which could continue it's offensive against the bourgeoisie

Not at all. You confuse party organization prior to a revolutionary period with ad hoc party organization during such. Had the PCF been more rev-centrist but not ultra-leftist, no ad hoc organization would have been able to compete with the party for supporters.

[Barry Lyndon]

In my view 1968 was a revolutionary wave easily comparable to the one in 1917-23, in some ways even more so because the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 was confined to Europe, while the one in 1968 was truly global. The American student radicalism to me is of minor importance, the greatest upheavals were:

>The resistance war of the Vietnamese reached its climax with the Tet Offensive, which exposed the weakness of the American Goliath and tied down huge numbers of troops, giving inspiration and breathing space to opponents of imperialism everywhere.
>The black ghetto uprisings in 100 cities across the United States following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in which 50,000 National Guard and regular military were deployed to put them down, the largest internal deployment of the US military since the Civil War. With half a million troops already in Vietnam, a full-scale black rebellion could very well have strained US imperialism's military capabilities to a breaking point.
>The May 1968 radicalized workers strikes paralyzing France, making a revolution in an industrialized capitalist country a real possibility for the first time since the Spartacist uprising in 1919 Germany.
>Major unrest in the Eastern Bloc, particularly the Prague Spring- popular demands for 'socialism with a human face' in Eastern Europe.
>What no one has mentioned yet-the tremendous upheaval in China during its Cultural Revolution, a direct inspiration for student radicalism in the West. China, in turmoil because of the contradiction between its repressive bureaucracy and radicalized sections of students and workers, was on the verge of civil war.

I see 1968 as a massive wave that nearly crested but, due to a number of factors, did not and settled down. I think we need to learn why this happened, and to study the mistakes that prevented the wave of revolution from washing over the world.
But 'whichdoctor', whose ultra-left talking shop does nothing but denigrate revolutionary movements and takes special pleasure in attacking non-whites, is not the one to have any useful insights.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The original post wasn't about the anti-war or black movements in the US, or even the Viet Cong's efforts, however commendable they were. It was actually a critique of Euro-centrism.

[Prairie Fire]

I wasn't planning on making another post on this thread, but there a few points that require an answer from me.

A.R.Amistad


Ah, Stalinist infantilism at its finest so, screw worker's movements in industrial nations? We have to wait for a call from the third world, even if the industrial nations are closer to a worker's revolution?


Eh?

Erm, where did I say anything remotely similar to that in any sense of the word? What did I say that could have been interpreted as workers movements in industrialized countries taking a back seat to "third world" liberation movements and revolutionary states?

My actual point, in contrast to this third-worldist character that you have created and are arguing with, was a criticism of viewpoints that exhalt workers actions in some countries (which never developed into a revolutionary society) and completely overlooks (or openly shuns) triumphant revolutions and post-revolutionary building of a new society in various countries, which was also taking place around the world at that time period.

Even in the original snippet of mine that you are quoting, I make no distinction between "industrial" and "third world" countries, nor do I make that distinction on my entire original post in this thread.

One of these days I'll give you the link to my criticism that I wrote of third-worldism, but in the meantime lose the strawmyn.

Devrim

This is a case in point, Prairie Fire discusses the period, mentions various 'popular struggles', and talks about the activities of a small leftist group like the Black Panthers. It doesn't at all mention workers struggles such as the 11,000,000 French workers who struck in May 1968, or the 440,000,000 hours lost to strikes in Italy the following year.

While I am vaguely aware of the European left, especially the workers movement in France and Italy which was quite large and Militant, I decided to use North American examples because

a.) I'm a North American, so I picked struggles that were geographically close to me

b.) These examples are generally more well publicized than the European workers movement, and I was trying to cite examples that most were familiar with

c.) I especially wanted to emphasize victories that came out of the sixties. The millions that marched in France were very impressive, and I also have a fondness for the Italian workers andwhat I know about their history of strikes, but I was trying to emphasize major victories that came out of the sixties, to back up my point that important head-way was made during this time period.

My choice wasn't simply a matter of numbers, it was a matter of which forces came out on top at the end of their actions.


Then it gets even more obscure in the leftist groups it talks about.

So, I'm an "it" now? I'm not worthy of addressing as a humyn?


I had never heard of some of these.

Just as, as a European, you chose to comment on the legacy of forces geographically close to you, as a North American I chose to comment on the legacy of forces geographically close to me.

If you have never heard of any of these, I think that this is more of a reflection on regionalism than the level of activity of these organizations and their clout with the American working class.


The revolutionary force in society is the working class, not groups of intellectual voluntarists.

Cut the 'prolier-than-thou' bullshit. Even you yourself don't reject organization (ie. the "International Communist current"), and I assume that you recognize the role of organization in the workers movement, yes?

Of course the working class is the force for revolutionary change in society captain obvious, but should the working class be left to their own devices to spontaneously develope (presumably through magic) into a class conscious force that overthrows exploitation and siezes state/political power with a common political agenda shared by all?

Lose the santimonious attitude, and stop shamelessly capitalizing on my every sentence where I don't mention the working class, you opportunist.


This seems to be a bit rich to me coming from somebody who spent the opening five paragraphs of her post going on about tiny groups in America.

The anti-war movement, both within the military and among civilians, was a "tiny group" (it wasn't a single organization)?

The American civil rights movement was a "tiny group"?


And, why is that an issue that I used American examples? Unlike the OP, I at least made mention of the struggle in countries other than America and France, and I've allready told you the reason that I chose American examples (see above).

Also, I detect an over-all contempt for organizations from you. Are you more in favour of "movements" than organizations?


Workers were dying on behalf of rival imperialisms.

http://media.animevice.com/uploads/0/74/58656-5cd43610dbfd3e64f7a6d9dyw4_super.jpg

Yes, the war in Indochina could certainly be summed up in an 8 word sentence. How true that is.

So, in this analysis the workers and peasants of Vietnam,Cambodia (Kampuchea) and Laos are equally culpable for the imperialism in Indochina as the American Marines who were occupying them?

Yes, Yes, the NVA, NLF (Viet Cong), Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao, and the masses of oppressed peoples of Indochina, had goals and aspirations that fell into correlation with the greater geopolitical strategies of the Chinese and Soviet Social imperialists (ie. the removal of American domination and interests in Vietnam), and hence aid and supplies were extended to the people of Indochina by these imperialist powers.

That said, does that make the people of Indochina proxies of imperialism for accepting aid from the Chinese and Soviets, or merely pragmatists who made the fullest use of inter-imperialist contradictions and accepted the vital support that they needed in order to defeat the occupation and defend themselves from American aggression?

Your cute little dogma ignores petty details, like the important role played by imported Chinese foodstuffs in sustaining the people of Vietnam, because the United States military was intentionally bombarding and destroying productive agriculture and crops in an attempt to starve the Vietnamese fighting forces into submission (similar measures were taken in Cambodia, and probably Laos as well). Without this vital food aid, it is quite possible that the war effort would have ended in defeat for the forces fighting the American occupation.

Your outlook seems more concerned with the fact that Surface to Air missiles in Vietnam, used to shoot down American aircraft and defend large population centres, were manufactured and provided by the USSR than that the Americans were bombarding North Vietnamese cities into dust and anti-aircraft defenses were needed by people to save themselves from this onslaught.

Perhaps, it would be more Über revolutionary for the peoples of Indochina to reject all imperialist aid, and fight the Americans with their fists on empty stomachs, while around them their homes were reduced to rubble by aircraft that they had no means of shooting down?

As usual, dogma and avant-garde comments (without analysis) take the front seat over the material realities present in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia at the time, and in your narrative the people who died upon American bullets fighting for their national liberation were equally imperialist to those who murdered them.

(sigh).



To characterise what went on in France, which was the biggest mass strike in history involving over two thirds of the country's workforce as a 'largely student based movement'seems a little strange to me. No, actually, it doesn't. It seems quite consistent with your political approach of ignoring the working class completely.

Fuck, you are a shameless opportunist.

Every sentence or paragraph where I forget to make the obligatory mention of the working class is validation of your prejudice that not only myself as an individual, but by extension my entire political tendency, "ignore the working class completely".

In the quotation that you are pouncing on and butchering to elevate yourself at my expense, I didn't mention the French working class because I wasn't criticizing the French working class. I was criticizing the Student movement, which did play a very large part in May 68.

Sheesh, do I need to mention the working class gratuitously in every sentence like a verbal tic for you to back off? Instead of making cheap shots and easy, un-informed condemnations of various historical movements (with no specific charges levelled), try addressing subjects politically rather than trying to confirm your prejudices.

[Glenn Beck]

I sometimes find that the Left's discussion of the 60's is largely ethnocentric, because apparently there was only struggle in the US and France. May I remind you all of the student struggles in Brazil of the late 60s?

I dunno what all those protesters in Brazil, Mexico, etc. were doing besides getting shot at but it really couldn't have been all that important. I mean even if they had succeeded in bringing about a revolution it would have just created another crappy third world stalinist dictatorship.

What we really need is a communist Europe ruled by cultured artists and intellectuals, preferably French dudes, to show the world's people the true meaning of Marxism and export revolution to all the darker parts of the globe.

[Bilan]

Glenn Beck, come on now.
Don't.

[which doctor]

I'll respond to the various points people have brought up later when I have more time, but I wanted to make a few clarifications.

Of course my post, and the thread's title, were meant to be intentionally provocative, and bring out the various New Left apologists of all stripes and colors, which it clearly did.

I'm not even sure what it would exactly mean for the 1960's to have been a waste of time, but the point I wanted to get at was how we haven't learned the lessons of these, largely failed, worker and student movements, but instead seek to repeat them because they are the nearest 'revolutionary' moments to our own memory. Of course there is a lot to be learned from these events, but frankly I don't think we've really learned all that much. My point is that the 1960's were only a waste of time and energy if we let them be.

[Bilan]

^^^ I'm placing my stakes on a hypothetically class-strugglist but rev-centrist PCF.

...



The only knowledge and lessons to be taken from this is that the mass strike strategy just doesn't work.

If that's all you got you are banned from analysing things.



Had it not been for its reformism, the PCF could have taken advantage of the mass strike, but that would have been because of its earlier "voluntarist" Kautskyan organization of the working class well before the wildcat frenzy, something which you left-coms reject.


There's so many things wrong with that statement that I'm not sure where to begin.
First of all, the presumption that a "Kautskyan", by which you mean, social democratic, organisation could have led to revolution has no basis in reality.
Secondly, the fact of the PCF's reformism is not a "had it not been for" issue. That is the equivalent of "Well, if the Labour party had not been reformist...".
Thirdly, the creation of a mass party before the revolution was not, and is not, a solution.



Not at all. You confuse party organization prior to a revolutionary period with ad hoc party organization during such. Had the PCF been more rev-centrist but not ultra-leftist, no ad hoc organization would have been able to compete with the party for supporters.

No, I assert that the formation of the 'mass' proletarian party is an organic part of the struggle. It is not created before. It never is, and with good reason: because it doesn't work.

[Klaatu]

I think it was the 80s that was the big waste of time.

The Reagan culture that was spawned in the 80's is what is presently leading America down the path of doom.
The 60s started a positive change in America, (and there have been some bad parts of it) but the 80s legacy
has led us down the wrong fork in the river...

[which doctor]

What we really need is a communist Europe ruled by cultured artists and intellectuals, preferably French dudes, to show the world's people the true meaning of Marxism and export revolution to all the darker parts of the globe.
Cultured European intellectual you say?

http://sdow.semanticweb.org/2008/pub/slides/SDoW2008-slides-Beyond-Walled-Gardens-Open-Standards-for-the-Social-Web/trotsky.jpg

[Die Neue Zeit]

The only knowledge and lessons to be taken from this is that the mass strike strategy just doesn't work.If that's all you got you are banned from analysing things.

I know, I myself regret the times I've resorted to quick statements like that. Every time I critique the overall "To Hell With Bureaucracy" strategy from Bakunin and Sorel to Luxemburg and the left-communist and anti-party tradition, I always refer to the material discussed in the Revolutionary Strategy usergroup.

Feel free to join and post, even if you're already not in agreement:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=205

I won't respond to your later statements because it's that time where I think we're going about in circles. Your statement "Thirdly, the creation of a mass party before the revolution was not, and is not, a solution" is the same kind of one-liner you're critiquing me of using up above.

You adhere to the "Hegelian-Marxist" strategy above. I adhere to the "Marxist center" strategy of Kautsky, "his disciple" Lenin, the rest of the Iskra tendency (so including some Mensheviks like Martov), Jules Guesde in France, etc. Before the sentence in my sig, Mike Macnair said "Without the central core of that [Kautskyan] strategy... no Russian revolution, because no mass Bolshevik party."

[Bilan]

You adhere to the "Hegelian-Marxist" strategy above. I adhere to the "Marxist center" strategy of Kautsky, "his disciple" Lenin, the rest of the Iskra tendency (so including some Mensheviks like Martov), Jules Guesde in France, etc. Before the sentence in my sig, Mike Macnair said "Without the central core of that [Kautskyan] strategy... no Russian revolution, because no mass Bolshevik party."

I adhere to a Hegelian-Marxist strategy?
Come on now. What on earth are you on about?

[Devrim]

I sometimes find that the Left's discussion of the 60's is largely ethnocentric, because apparently there was only struggle in the US and France. May I remind you all of the student struggles in Brazil of the late 60s?

What workers' struggles were there in the US? I imagine there were some, but it is not something I really know about. When I think of the period I think of France, the 'hot autumn' in Italy the following year. Poland in 1970. The US really doesn't come to my mind at all.

Devrim

[Devrim]

At least with regards to the student movements of the time, the idea was to eschew any sort of theoretical approach, and replace it with actionism and the 'politics of desire,' as if all it took was for people to want to live another way. And as a result of this, these movements were grounded in their own immediacy from the very beginning, unable to imagine what historical potential they had in the future, mostly because there wasn't anything to look forward to. You can construct all the 'situations' you want, but at the end of the day reification is not something that can be escaped, and capitalism is going to continue unchecked.

I think you completely miss the boat here. In France there was a mass strike of 11 million workers. There was also a tiny* group of self-publicists who talked about 'situations'. Which is more important?


How so? Do you really consider 1968 to be a revolutionary moment, on par for instance, with 1917-1923?

What does it mean to say 'on a par with'? Certainly there was a massive international movement which started in 1986, which threatened to though did not actually succeed in, overthrowing states. It was a pretty close run thing in Iran in 1979 though.

Devrim

*In its long history of expulsions and infighting the French section of the SI had 15 members in total. Of course they had much less than that at an given time.

[Devrim]

In a sense, I agree. One has to see May '68 as a revolt that took place in a modern first world country (which at the time wasn't exactly under an economic depression and sections of the working class had a good standard of living in my understanding) that had potential.

I think that you are wrong on the second part of this. By 1968 the crisis was beginning to reassert itself internationally even though it wasn't full blown until a couple of years later.

I think that the whole idea of not being under economic depression also misses the point. With the exception of the post-war boom of twenty plus years after the Second World War capitalism has been in crisis since the late nineteenth century. ;)

Devrim

[Devrim]

The wildcat strikers had no coherent form of alternative authority and accompanying bureaucracy (of course not the same hacks running the French state). There was no revolutionary strategy of organizing the class well before this spontaneous fetish occurred.

Jacob, first please try to speak in English. I'm not sure if you are a native speaker, but if you are not inventing all of these knew words doesn't make you any easier to understand. 'Struggelist', for example, is not a word.

I seriously struggle to get what you are going on about sometimes. Take this phrase for example:


before this spontaneous fetish occurred

What does it mean? A fetish is an 'irrational devotion', (i.e. a feeling) how can it occur?

To get back to what I think is your point, though I am not 100% sure, the building of party and the development of class struggle are intertwined processes. You can't just say build a mass party now, and expect it to emerge. It is fundamentally related to the struggle.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Had it not been for its reformism, the PCF could have taken advantage of the mass strike, but that would have been because of its earlier "voluntarist" Kautskyan organization of the working class well before the wildcat frenzy, something which you left-coms reject.

The point about the PCF was not that it was 'reformist', but that it was an anti-working class bourgeois party, which whatever the subjective good intentions of many of its members who considered themselves to be socialists objective sided with the state and attacked the struggle.


I'm placing my stakes on a hypothetically class-strugglist but rev-centrist PCF.

This is idealism gone bananas. Consider the dialogue when in the bookies:

"I'd like to put a bet on who will win the Champions League please"

"Who would you like to bet on; Barca, Bayern, Lyon, or Inter?"

"None of them thanks. I'm placing my stakes on the hypothetical Best, Cruyff, Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer dream team."

Devrim

[Devrim]

In my view 1968 was a revolutionary wave easily comparable to the one in 1917-23, in some ways even more so because the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 was confined to Europe, while the one in 1968 was truly global. The American student radicalism to me is of minor importance, the greatest upheavals were:

>The resistance war of the Vietnamese reached its climax with the Tet Offensive, which exposed the weakness of the American Goliath and tied down huge numbers of troops, giving inspiration and breathing space to opponents of imperialism everywhere.
>The black ghetto uprisings in 100 cities across the United States following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in which 50,000 National Guard and regular military were deployed to put them down, the largest internal deployment of the US military since the Civil War. With half a million troops already in Vietnam, a full-scale black rebellion could very well have strained US imperialism's military capabilities to a breaking point.
>The May 1968 radicalized workers strikes paralyzing France, making a revolution in an industrialized capitalist country a real possibility for the first time since the Spartacist uprising in 1919 Germany.
>Major unrest in the Eastern Bloc, particularly the Prague Spring- popular demands for 'socialism with a human face' in Eastern Europe.
>What no one has mentioned yet-the tremendous upheaval in China during its Cultural Revolution, a direct inspiration for student radicalism in the West. China, in turmoil because of the contradiction between its repressive bureaucracy and radicalized sections of students and workers, was on the verge of civil war.

I think that this post expresses some very confused ideas. Amongst the things mentioned the events in May 1968 stand out as the organised struggle of the working class. The rest aren't.

Devrim

[Devrim]

So, I'm an "it" now? I'm not worthy of addressing as a humyn?

Sorry if I caused any personal offence. I was referring to the post and expressed myself badly.

On your reasons for using the examples that you did:

While I am vaguely aware of the European left, especially the workers movement in France and Italy which was quite large and Militant, I decided to use North American examples because

a.) I'm a North American, so I picked struggles that were geographically close to me

b.) These examples are generally more well publicized than the European workers movement, and I was trying to cite examples that most were familiar with

c.) I especially wanted to emphasize victories that came out of the sixties. The millions that marched in France were very impressive, and I also have a fondness for the Italian workers andwhat I know about their history of strikes, but I was trying to emphasize major victories that came out of the sixties, to back up my point that important head-way was made during this time period.

My choice wasn't simply a matter of numbers, it was a matter of which forces came out on top at the end of their actions.

I think that you miss the point completely.


While I am vaguely aware of the European left, especially the workers movement in France and Italy which was quite large and Militant,

The mass strike in France wasn't just 'quite large and Militant', it was the biggest mass strike in history. For a 'communist' to be only 'vaguely aware' of it says quite a lot.


These examples are generally more well publicized than the European workers movement, and I was trying to cite examples that most were familiar with

I don't think that they are at all 'more well publicized'. They were massive events that had massive effects on everybody in society. I was living in Northern Ireland in 1974 for example and all workplaces and schools there (and through out the UK) were on a three day week because there wasn't enough electricity due to miners' strikes. Everybody noticed, much more than they noticed the activity of some left political groups such as ' SDS, Black Panthers, Weathermen, RCP, Young Lords, AIM, PLP,'


c.) I especially wanted to emphasize victories that came out of the sixties. The millions that marched in France were very impressive, and I also have a fondness for the Italian workers andwhat I know about their history of strikes, but I was trying to emphasize major victories that came out of the sixties, to back up my point that important head-way was made during this time period.

My choice wasn't simply a matter of numbers, it was a matter of which forces came out on top at the end of their actions.

The bourgeoisie won. We still have capitalism.


Just as, as a European, you chose to comment on the legacy of forces geographically close to you, as a North American I chose to comment on the legacy of forces geographically close to me.

If you have never heard of any of these, I think that this is more of a reflection on regionalism than the level of activity of these organizations and their clout with the American working class.

This isn't the point at all. I am talking about massive movements of the working class. You are talking about small leftist groups. They are different categories.


Cut the 'prolier-than-thou' bullshit. Even you yourself don't reject organization (ie. the "International Communist current"), and I assume that you recognize the role of organization in the workers movement, yes?

Of course, we do. We are for an internationally centralised communist party. It is not "'prolier-than-thou' bullshit" to insist on the central role of the working class though. It is talking about how periods in history are viewed. Do we view the events of 68 as something that was connected to leftist political groups or as the beginning of a period of massive international workers struggle?


The anti-war movement, both within the military and among civilians, was a "tiny group" (it wasn't a single organization)?

The American civil rights movement was a "tiny group"?

The groups you referred to were these:


SDS, Black Panthers, Weathermen, RCP, Young Lords, AIM, PLP,

How big were the Weather Underground. I have no idea. I think compared to 11,000,000 strikers they were pretty tiny though.


Also, I detect an over-all contempt for organizations from you. Are you more in favour of "movements" than organizations?

As I explained before we are for a party. We do have contempt for the type of organisations you listed though.


Fuck, you are a shameless opportunist.

Opportunist has a real meaning in Marxist terms. It isn't just somebody who uses an opportunity to criticise.


Every sentence or paragraph where I forget to make the obligatory mention of the working class is validation of your prejudice that not only myself as an individual, but by extension my entire political tendency, "ignore the working class completely".

In the quotation that you are pouncing on and butchering to elevate yourself at my expense, I didn't mention the French working class because I wasn't criticizing the French working class. I was criticizing the Student movement, which did play a very large part in May 68.

Sheesh, do I need to mention the working class gratuitously in every sentence like a verbal tic for you to back off? Instead of making cheap shots and easy, un-informed condemnations of various historical movements (with no specific charges levelled), try addressing subjects politically rather than trying to confirm your prejudices.

It is not at all about 'not mentioning the working class in every sentence'.

It is about the characterisation of a period. Is the period that opens with the events of May 1968 one of massive working class struggles, or is it a period of leftist activism?

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

I adhere to a Hegelian-Marxist strategy?
Come on now. What on earth are you on about?

http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/books/classical.html


A 'Hegelian Marxist' and semi-syndicalist left tendency within the International. Prominent leaders or writers included Antonio Labriola in Italy, Herman Gorter in the Netherlands and Rosa Luxemburg in Poland and Germany. This tendency argued that the International should not merely prepare for the revolution, but should fight for it by promoting strike action and the general strike, which was seen as the means by which the proletariat escaped from the dynamics of commodity fetishism and began to emancipate itself; it tended to deprioritise or reject electoral and parliamentary activity. Luxemburg's pamphlet The mass strike is part of the ongoing polemics of this tendency against the right and centre round the 'strategy' of the general strike. Trotsky seems to have been intermediate between this position and the centre.

[...]

Once we see that the Hegelian Marxists before the war represented a distinct international political tendency linked to left syndicalism, we are forced to make a balance sheet of the strategy of this tendency. The conclusion is simple. It failed miserably in the face of revolutionary crises, both in Germany in 1918-19 and in Italy in 1919-21. Similar strategies have failed repeatedly in similar situations between 1921 and the present date. As to why the strategy failed, the answer is equally clear. The Hegelian Marxist left neglected the preparatory work, especially the construction of a workers' political party under the existing regime, which the Kautskyan centre insisted on. They did so due to their over-reliance on the spontaneity of the mass movement to solve political problems.

Their radical-left refusal of the struggle for political leadership in relation to pre-revolutionary political problems left them politically disarmed when revolutionary crisis actually broke out. This is not to say that they did not organise at all, though this is perhaps true of the German left before 1914. The problem is just as much that they tended to organise small sects - and their descendants, the 'libertarian left' and 'council communists', continue to do so to this day. There is more than a trace of these vices in the history of the Trotskyist movement, including that of the SWP.

I hope that answers Devrim's response. :glare:

[RED DAVE]

The French Revolution As It Appeared To Enthusiasts At Its Commencement

William Wordsworth (http://poetry.poetryx.com/poets/21/)


Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress—to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself )
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;—
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart’s desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Wcre called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,—the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!This is what the 60s were about! More about the politics later.

RED DAVE

[Devrim]

I hope that answers Devrim's response. :glare:

No, not really. It is just petty dishonest name calling based on inadequate historical knowledge, a few points to illustrate this;


This tendency argued that the International should not merely prepare for the revolution, but should fight for it by promoting strike action and the general strike,

Actually this tendency opposed the mass strike to the general strike. They saw the mass strike as a syndicalist tactic.


Once we see that the Hegelian Marxists before the war represented a distinct international political tendency linked to left syndicalism, we are forced to make a balance sheet of the strategy of this tendency.

The people who you call 'Hegelian Marxists' were not linked to left syndicalism, and overtly argued that they weren't syndicalists.


Their radical-left refusal of the struggle for political leadership in relation to pre-revolutionary political problems left them politically disarmed when revolutionary crisis actually broke out.

Where does this come from. We are talking about a party which believed in building a leadership.


This is not to say that they did not organise at all, though this is perhaps true of the German left before 1914.

The German left prior to 1914 was organised in the SPD, which you so love. It was probably the most dynamic wing.


The problem is just as much that they tended to organise small sects -

The Germany KAPD was actually the majority of the KPD when it was expelled. Note that it was expelled, and it didn't split. They wanted to stay in the party and fight for their positions. The KAPD had tens of thousands of members, and its factory organisation, which was not syndicalist, but formed on commitment to the communist programme had around 250,000 members. I think that is hardly a sect.

Devrim

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Hell no they were not.

[Leo]

You're absolutely right. The sixties was an enormous waste of time, what with the whole "Ending the War in Vietnam" thing. Certainly the actions of millions in the United States and abroad had no bearing on the outcome of the American war in IndoChina.

I'm also quite certain that the masses of the civilian anti-war movement among both military persynelle and the masses of American people had absolutely no bearing what-so ever on the end of formal conscription in the United States in 1973 (Economic pressures that push many into service persist, but the systematic draft of American civilians into military service is, at this time, a thing of the past).

And that whole "civil rights" thing. Sheesh, what did that ever accomplish, eh?

The social programs among the Black Panther party that fed hundreds of thousands, provided clothing, medical care, legal aid, etc... again, just a sectarian manifestation of the Sino-Soviet split, completely irrelevent in any tangible sort of way.


Okay, seriously though, In a way I kind of understand what you are trying to say. There are good criticisms to be made of the forces and leadership at the time, especially how the majority got diverted into Woodstock, "free love" and psycadelic drugs, and there are valid criticisms to be made of the alleged revolutionary forces at the time (ie. SDS, Black Panthers, Weathermen, RCP, Young Lords, AIM, PLP, etc,etc).


a.) I'm a North American, so I picked struggles that were geographically close to me

I think this is a problematic description of the 68 movement even for North America. In the US, the years between 1968 and 1970 saw massive class struggles, some of which involved thousands (like the Chrysler wildcat strike of 68, Charleston hospital strike in 69, or the Salad Bown strikes of the farm workers in 1970), some tens of thousands (like the Florida teachers strike of 68) and some hundreds of thousands (like the US postal strike of 1970). While not comparable to the French or Italian workers' struggles of the same years, the workers struggles were at the heart of the 68 movement in the US. The same thing can be said about the post-68 movement in Canada, with lots of struggles leading up to the great Quebec general strike in 1972, involving hundreds of thousands of workers, and being the largest workers' struggle in the history of North America.

As in Europe, labor struggles were at the center of the movement in North America. One unique feature of the American movement was that it was coupled with a very powerful soldiers struggle against the ongoing war, which made the proletarian movement in the US a very powerful force as the soldiers started getting support from the working masses. There were publications such as "Worker and Soldier" which came out in those years. Class struggles also provided the most solid basis for the struggles against the oppression of black people, especially strikes like the Chrysler wildcat strike of 1968 and the Charleston hospital strike of 1969 were incited and lead by workers of color, and they managed to gain massive solidarity of thousands of workers. It could be said that most if not all the gains won on this question were direct or indirect results of the actual struggles of workers. As for the civil rights movement as a mass pacifist cross-class rights movement itself, I think it resulted in more myths than any actual gains: the number one myth being the claim that general racism didn't exist in the US anymore as a result of the civil rights movement. The very nature of workers struggles - being unitary and being based on solidarity - made them the most favorable ground for general social issues. The student movement, on the other hand, never managed that. The Columbia University occupation in 68, ending up getting divided on the racial lines could be pointed out as an example of the student movements disability on this level. The proletarian students did provide a dynamic and massive support in some cases for struggling workers or soldiers, but they weren't inspirational like the students of May 68 were for the working class as a whole. Also, the student movement became where lots of dead-end practices and ideologies originated from, from the openly class collaborationist ideology of Black Power to the student pacifism of the SDS, the armed charity work of the Black Panthers or the adventurism of many armed tiny student groups such as the SLA or the Weathermen, hippie liberalism and so forth.

[Prairie Fire]

The mass strike in France wasn't just 'quite large and Militant', it was the biggest mass strike in history. For a 'communist' to be only 'vaguely aware' of it says quite a lot.


No it doesn't, and now you are attacking the legitimacy of my own politics (and by extension, everyone who shares them) on the grounds of not fetishizing European strikes to the level that you do.

Now, on the one hand there is regionalism at play here, and for this reason I'm more familiar with the workers movement and peoples struggles in North America than in Western Europe. Not just "left activism", but the rich history of workers struggle as well, In my country (ie. the Winnipeg General strike, the Alberta Coal miners strike, the On to Ottawa trek, etc) and in the rest of North America as well ( I've studied early American strikes in the late 1800's-30's, mostly in the context of how they were dealt with by the state.).

When I have taken the time to educate myself on the legacy of European struggles, I generally choose those that ended in victory. The European continent has been rocked by many strikes, many labour actions, many revolutions that were almost victorious over the centuries. As a Marxist though, I'm more interested in strategies for success than in numbers games.

France and Italy were two countries at the brink of revolution for many decades (perhaps still are), but for one reason or another France never advanced further in the armed struggle portion than the Paris Commune, and I think that a handful of armed Partisans in Italy during the Second World War was the extent of revolutionary armed struggle in that country.

If you feel that it is unacceptable that a North American like myself doesn't fixate her eyes on the the extremely large, and possibly organized, advanced European workers movement as the pinnacle of all humyn endeavour and workers struggle, as the most advanced forces aside from paltry "left groups" on my continent, then riddle me this:

With 11 million workers and the ability to sieze state power, why did this trade Union strike never develope into an armed struggle that culminated in the siezing of state/political power?

As I said, I organize for victory, so you may as well make it 20 million, 30 million, or even 100 million workers marching in France. If the outcome was not political power in the hands of the working class, then what do I have to learn from them? That mass workers actions can gain concessions from the state? I allready know that.

There is nothing necessarilly wrong with improving the lot of workers in the short term, but the issue is how do we take it to the next level?

May 68 in many ways is validation of Lenins thesis, that without the Vanguard party the working class never achieves more than trade union organization of their own accord. You continue to fixate on the fact that they were very large trade unions, but trade unions none the less who accepted their concessions and didn't push beyond that.

So, make it 100 million. 200 million. 1 Billion people. Have a strike with lots of numbers at it to boost your self esteem, but unless it triumphs in political power in the hands of the working class then what right do you have to criticize me for not devoting my life to reverence of a labour action (large and popular as it may be) that never lead to working class political power?




I don't think that they are at all 'more well publicized'. They were massive events that had massive effects on everybody in society. I was living in Northern Ireland in 1974 for example and all workplaces and schools there (and through out the UK) were on a three day week because there wasn't enough electricity due to miners' strikes. Everybody noticed, much more than they noticed the activity of some left political groups such as ' SDS, Black Panthers, Weathermen, RCP, Young Lords, AIM, PLP,'


Your anecdote only proves the regionalism of things.

You have to go over 30 years into the past, when these events were current events, to prove your point that everyone in Europe knew about them.

My point was that now, at this present time when I wrote the previous post, the struggles of Europe which are not contemporary are relatively unknown. Meanwhile, the hegemonic nature of American mass media generally means that their specific experience is projected onto countries all over the world, henceforth as a little girl I had heard of the Vietnam war and of hippies and woodstock at a time when I was watching 'Sailor moon'.

30 years later, the American experience has become part of international pop culture, meanwhile I had to become a Marxist and dig deep in literature to find any mention of any workers struggles in history no matter how large.

I had never heard of May 68 before I became immersed in socialist politics, but even in preschool, I had heard of the Black Panthers.

I'm not here to argue about which cause was more legitimate, or hand out medals at the revolutionary olympics, I'm just saying that because of the hegemonic nature of United States imperialism, their history has become the worlds history, projected as general history, so their experiences have become absorbed commonly by all, and are therefore better publicized.

I stand by my initial point, that the struggles of the American left, however miniscule they may seem to you, are generally more commonly known than the struggles of the European left.



The bourgeoisie won. We still have capitalism.


Again, we get one of these cute little absolutes from you that is supposed to wrap up the legacy of world politics and global class struggle into one-two sentences.

It's interesting that you are putting forward the "all or nothing" point of view, because if that is the case, and every socialist experiment failed in the long run (some, I think we would both argue, were crushed rather than failed of their own accord), then why focus on May 68? If you want to make the argument that 'teh Staliniztz' were defeated by the bourgeoisie, ultimately so were all of the European workers movements.

By your actions and preferences alone, you demonstrate that some past workers actions were more legitimate than others, and have more to teach us, so even you aknowledge that your smug comment above becomes a non-sequiter.



This isn't the point at all. I am talking about massive movements of the working class. You are talking about small leftist groups. They are different categories.


(Sigh) In one of the four paragraphs at the beginning of my initial post, I talked about groups, and again in an other paragraph I talked about which groups were active at the time and could have their tactics criticized.

You choose to side-step the fact that I opened up with talking about the anti-Vietnam war movement (not the domain of any 'small group'), the anti-conscription movement (again, not the domain of any small group) and the civil rights movement (notice a pattern here?)?

You ignore posts of mine that are inconvenient to the character that you are trying to build of me, a Stalinist "new leftist" with disdain for the working class who puts her own cloistered sect above the working class. My own words don't confirm this character though, so you simply ignore the passages that contradict your interpretation.


Of course, we do. We are for an internationally centralised communist party. It is not "'prolier-than-thou' bullshit" to insist on the central role of the working class though.

It is santimonious to ding me for not mentioning the working class gratuitously.

I have stated repeatedly in previous threads my thoughts on the revolutionary role of the working class.



It is talking about how periods in history are viewed. Do we view the events of 68 as something that was connected to leftist political groups or as the beginning of a period of massive international workers struggle?

I view the events as part of a period of massive international workers struggle, but I recognize the players within these movements who tried to add a touch of coherence and clarity to the political objectives of the militant working class.

These two things are not mutually exclusive.





Opportunist has a real meaning in Marxist terms. It isn't just somebody who uses an opportunity to criticise.


Oh my god, I wish that I could reach through the screen and slap you.

YES, THANK YOU DEVRIM. THERE IS A DUAL MEANING TO THE WORD 'OPPORTUNIST' IN MARXISM. I AM COMPLETELY AWARE OF THIS (as an anti-revisionist ML, how could I not be?), BUT IN THIS CASE I CHOSE TO USE THE MORE COMMON DEFINITION (ie. 'the art, policy, or practice of taking advantage of opportunities or circumstances often with little regard for principles or consequences').

The point that I was making there was that you are nit picking and choosing examples from my sentences that validated your prejudices and dinging me on those points, to elevate your revolutionary street-cred at my expense. Thank you again for proving me wrong with this recent contribution that I quoted above.



How big were the Weather Underground. I have no idea. I think compared to 11,000,000 strikers they were pretty tiny though.


You are still playing the numbers game.
I'm not a supporter of the weather underground at all, I just mentioned them because they were a force on the political scene at the time, in the United states, so their tactics could be criticized as much as any other.

You chose to take the cue to criticize me for having the audacity to pay attention to North American struggles and not European ones, and refusing to submit myself to being dazzled by big numbers and abandon the analysis of the qualitative contributions and results of a given movement.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Do left-communists generally just write off the upheaval in the Soviet Bloc as just being another bourgeois faction fight (I'll admit that I don't really know enough about it to have that much of an analysis)? I'd say that even if the black revolt in the US wasn't particularly organised for the most part, it was still a mass proletarian struggle and noteworthy on that basis. And the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Movement), even if very very flawed, went beyond just being a "small leftist group". Although damn, think Leo's beat me to making the point about the Chrysler wildcat.

[Devrim]

Do left-communists generally just write off the upheaval in the Soviet Bloc as just being another bourgeois faction fight (I'll admit that I don't really know enough about it to have that much of an analysis)?

I don't think that the events in Prague in 1968 were a workers' movement. I lived near Prague, Mlada Boleslav for a while, and talked to a lot of people about it. It is the impression I got. The events in Hungry in 1956, and Berlin in 1953 were very different.


I'd say that even if the black revolt in the US wasn't particularly organised for the most part, it was still a mass proletarian struggle and noteworthy on that basis. And the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Movement), even if very very flawed, went beyond just being a "small leftist group". Although damn, think Leo's beat me to making the point about the Chrysler wildcat.

I think Leo explained well how we look at those sort of things.

Devrim

[Devrim]

No it doesn't, and now you are attacking the legitimacy of my own politics (and by extension, everyone who shares them) on the grounds of not fetishizing European strikes to the level that you do.


I am not 'attacking the legitimacy of your politics'. I just don't think that you are a communist. That doesn't apply to you on any sort of personal level, but does apply to everyone who shares your politics. It is not because of 'not fetishizing European strikes'. It is because I don't see Hoxhaism as having anything to do with socialism.


Now, on the one hand there is regionalism at play here, and for this reason I'm more familiar with the workers movement and peoples struggles in North America than in Western Europe. Not just "left activism", but the rich history of workers struggle as well, In my country (ie. the Winnipeg General strike, the Alberta Coal miners strike, the On to Ottawa trek, etc) and in the rest of North America as well ( I've studied early American strikes in the late 1800's-30's, mostly in the context of how they were dealt with by the state.).

There is no regionalism at play at all. Leo just gave a long list of class struggles in the US at the time. Just look over it again:


In the US, the years between 1968 and 1970 saw massive class struggles, some of which involved thousands (like the Chrysler wildcat strike of 68, Charleston hospital strike in 69, or the Salad Bown strikes of the farm workers in 1970), some tens of thousands (like the Florida teachers strike of 68) and some hundreds of thousands (like the US postal strike of 1970). While not comparable to the French or Italian workers' struggles of the same years, the workers struggles were at the heart of the 68 movement in the US. The same thing can be said about the post-68 movement in Canada, with lots of struggles leading up to the great Quebec general strike in 1972, involving hundreds of thousands of workers, and being the largest workers' struggle in the history of North America.

I think that the point is that these aren't the sort of struggles you were talking about.


If you feel that it is unacceptable that a North American like myself doesn't fixate her eyes on the the extremely large, and possibly organized, advanced European workers movement as the pinnacle of all humyn endeavour and workers struggle,

No, it is not that you aren't focused on "European workers' struggles". It is that you are not focused on workers struggles period. Also you seem to be implying that I am some sort of Euro-centerist, yet I talked about the struggle in Iran being as one of the high points of the movement that started in 1968. Also if you note from the location on my posts, I don't live in Europe, but in Asia minor.


With 11 million workers and the ability to sieze state power, why did this trade Union strike never develope into an armed struggle that culminated in the siezing of state/political power?

Off the main point a little, but it wasn't a trade union strike. It was organised outside of the trade unions.


Your anecdote only proves the regionalism of things.

You have to go over 30 years into the past, when these events were current events, to prove your point that everyone in Europe knew about them.

We are talking about events 30 years in the past. That is the subject of this thread.


I stand by my initial point, that the struggles of the American left, however miniscule they may seem to you, are generally more commonly known than the struggles of the European left.

I am not talking about the European left. I am talking about workers' struggles.


(Sigh) In one of the four paragraphs at the beginning of my initial post, I talked about groups, and again in an other paragraph I talked about which groups were active at the time and could have their tactics criticized.

You choose to side-step the fact that I opened up with talking about the anti-Vietnam war movement (not the domain of any 'small group'), the anti-conscription movement (again, not the domain of any small group) and the civil rights movement (notice a pattern here?)?

OK, I stand corrected, small left groups, and cross class movements.


You ignore posts of mine that are inconvenient to the character that you are trying to build of me, a Stalinist "new leftist" with disdain for the working class who puts her own cloistered sect above the working class. My own words don't confirm this character though, so you simply ignore the passages that contradict your interpretation.

But I don't need to quote you to demonstrate that. You are actually a self-admitted Stalinist, are you not. As for 'new left' I think that everyone can see that from your posts.


You chose to take the cue to criticize me for having the audacity to pay attention to North American struggles and not European ones, and refusing to submit myself to being dazzled by big numbers and abandon the analysis of the qualitative contributions and results of a given movement.

The point is not the location of the struggles that you 'pay attention to', but the types of struggles. The question is about how we typify the period. Do we see it a period of mass workers' struggles or a period of cross class leftist movements?

Devrim

[Jacobinist]

It's common, both in IRL and on this board, to invoke the imagery of sixties radicalism, including both the West Coast and French varieties, among others. Perhaps one of the most vivid examples of this is more recent version of SDS, which takes the name and symbolism of one of the most important radical student organizations in the US. But the original SDS was a disaster, and from the break-up you got all the crazy groups like the RCP, Weather Underground, Progressive Labor, etc. I can't understand why anyone would want to repeat that mistake again. There's also the frequent invocation to 'recreate May '68', which in reality was doomed from its beginning as well. I'll shamefully admit to once invoking situationist imagery and catchwords, so I understand the tempation, but I think it's one that needs to be reconsidered.

In some senses, the sixties were an even more confused time than we have today; you had the post-'56 confusion over Stalinism, the Sino-Soviet split, Prague Spring, natl. liberation movements, etc. The left in the sixties may have been more vocal than the left is nowadays, but that doesn't change that fact that the sixties left was an inadequate response to the situation, and invoking it today is to make an even bigger mistake. Perhaps if the left wasn't so keen on always repeating its own failures, we'd actually get somewhere.


In the United States, the 60's brought about a decent amount of change. The Civil Rights Act of 64, beginning of Medicare, etc. Also, the 1960's is where many of today's movements began. Take for example independent media, or enviromentalism. So I wouldnt consider the whole decade of waste of time or energy. I would say it was miguided, and ultimately (at least in the US) collapsed altogether once the US removed its imperial forces out of Vietnam; and thus took away what most of the middle-class hippies were protesting about in the first place.

My personal opinion on the decade was that there was legitimate turmoil. The era of 50's was very close minded; suit and tie, sub-urbia, McCarthyism, etc. The 60's opened up society, in a liberal way I guess. But the whole hippie scene was nothing more than a trend, not a revolutionary movment.

[Psy]

With 11 million workers and the ability to sieze state power, why did this trade Union strike never develope into an armed struggle that culminated in the siezing of state/political power?

It was not a trade union strike, the unions and communist party sided with the bourgeoisie state so the strike was a break from both bourgeoisie unions and bourgeoisie communists.

It also developed into armed struggle as technically Molotov Cocktails count as arms.

[Weezer]

To cast off the class war of the 60's counterculture is stupid.

The anti-Vietnam War movement was as important or more important as the opposition to the imperialist intervention in the Middle East today. Sure, the Weathermen were an infantile hippie fad, but their intentions were sincere, they were just too stoned to do anything that would help the proletariat, but they're not the only ones who were trying to build up socialism.

Remember the Black Panthers? Malcolm X? The '60s were not a waste of time, but non-whites gained many rights during this time, only certain groups were a waste of time in the '60s.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, not really. It is just petty dishonest name calling based on inadequate historical knowledge, a few points to illustrate this

I didn't do the name-calling; Macnair did (well, he didn't because he didn't use the term "ultra-left" :p ). That whole quote was a quote of him, and I quoted the surrounding text in earlier posts of mine (the five tendencies of the worker movement in the Second International era).


Actually this tendency opposed the mass strike to the general strike. They saw the mass strike as a syndicalist tactic.

I think you're confused here. It was the international tendency of Luxemburg, Korsch, Pannekoek, Gorter, etc. that coughed up the term "mass strike" for a reason.

While mass strikes are more spontaneous than the indiluted general strike of Bakunin and Sorel, the strategic aim of both remain the same: conning the masses to power when they aren't ready. In the case of the "Hegelians," the word "conning" should be preceded by the word "unwittingly."


The German left prior to 1914 was organised in the SPD, which you so love. It was probably the most dynamic wing.

There was no Spartacist faction formed before the war.

For my part, I will admit that the Marxist Center ("rev-centrists") did not have Lenin figures beneath Bebel and Kautsky to keep the tendency's proverbial ship steady, since Bebel's preferred successor was Hugo Haase (leaning towards the second tendency listed in the article, the stubbornly pacifistic "non-Marxist socialists").


The Germany KAPD was actually the majority of the KPD when it was expelled. Note that it was expelled, and it didn't split. They wanted to stay in the party and fight for their positions. The KAPD had tens of thousands of members, and its factory organisation, which was not syndicalist, but formed on commitment to the communist programme had around 250,000 members. I think that is hardly a sect.

Devrim

I was referring to the Spartacist decision to split from the USPD, not to the further-ultra-left formation of the KAPD. As I've posted before, the KPD itself was a sectarian, ultra-left split from an outstanding role model for left politics today: the USPD (http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-centrists/#comment-46638) (two posts).

[Devrim]

I didn't do the name-calling; Macnair did (well, he didn't because he didn't use the term "ultra-left" :p ). That whole quote was a quote of him, and I quoted the surrounding text in earlier posts of mine (the five tendencies of the worker movement in the Second International era).

Yes, I know where it is from. The name calling I was referring to is this:


A 'Hegelian Marxist' and semi-syndicalist left tendency within the International.


There was no Spartacist faction formed before the war.

You are of course right here, Spartacist was formed in 1916, but it was not the only, nor the biggest left opposition group in Germany. The divergences became clear in 1909, and following that groups such as the 'Bremen left' and the 'left radicals' began to organise themselves as factions.


I was referring to the Spartacist decision to split from the USPD, not to the further-ultra-left formation of the KAPD. As I've posted before, the KPD itself was a sectarian, ultra-left split from an outstanding role model for left politics today: the USPD (http://www.anonym.to/?http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-centrists/#comment-46638) (two posts).

This is, in my opinion, a very strange conception. However, I don't feel any need to help you in your desire to turn every thread into a discussion of your conceptions of organisation.

Devrim

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Just to make things clear, its verry obvious when you read this thread that moste things thats usually said about the 60-70s is bourgeois revisionism. They have re-writen history to be all about hippies, woodstock, drugs and goofy students who just sat down in basements smoked pot, drank red wine. It might be just because im quite young but thats the picture of this period that we have being learned at school, nothing about thoose great strikes and uprisings and they never mentioned the conection betwen this things. I think the problem with the left today (when it commes to this part of history) is that we have never really looked back and analysed it, what happend? whats good/wrong? etc. Also I think that many people in the left have got the picture of that all the shitty thing came with the "60s-movment" you know like the absolute defence of all thing that calls it self for art, animal rights, strange (so called "alternative") way of clothing and so on. But infact these things have allways being a part of the left, unfortunately. George Orwell writes about it in "The road to Wigan pier"


"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England."

[the last donut of the night]

Glenn Beck, come on now.
Don't.

While the ICC as a whole does not carry the attitude that Glenn Beck was mocking, I've met several left communists which are guilty of that reactionary notion.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is, in my opinion, a very strange conception. However, I don't feel any need to help you in your desire to turn every thread into a discussion of your conceptions of organisation.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-comintern/

"Left-Wing Communism did not contain the one key suggestion that was needed to counter that infantile disorder that was German Spartacism: dissolve the KPD [back] into a majority tendency of the USPD to counter the right-wing, SPD-ass-kissing renegades in that party’s leadership."

[freedon]

Good Post. So what is the model?

[Devrim]

Just to make things clear, its verry obvious when you read this thread that moste things thats usually said about the 60-70s is bourgeois revisionism. They have re-writen history to be all about hippies, woodstock, drugs and goofy students who just sat down in basements smoked pot, drank red wine. It might be just because im quite young but thats the picture of this period that we have being learned at school, nothing about thoose great strikes and uprisings and they never mentioned the conection betwen this things. I think the problem with the left today (when it commes to this part of history) is that we have never really looked back and analysed it, what happend? whats good/wrong? etc. Also I think that many people in the left have got the picture of that all the shitty thing came with the "60s-movment" you know like the absolute defence of all thing that calls it self for art, animal rights, strange (so called "alternative") way of clothing and so on. But infact these things have allways being a part of the left, unfortunately. George Orwell writes about it in "The road to Wigan pier"

I think that this is an important point. It also illustrates what most of the left talks about when it talks about history. Those of us who are old enough to remember these movements obviously do, but to those who are younger, if they believed what much of the left said, they wouldn't see it as a period of intense working class struggle at all.

Devrim

[Devrim]

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-comintern/

"Left-Wing Communism did not contain the one key suggestion that was needed to counter that infantile disorder that was German Spartacism: dissolve the KPD [back] into a majority tendency of the USPD to counter the right-wing, SPD-ass-kissing renegades in that party’s leadership."

Jacob, if you want to discuss the German workers movement after the First World War, and its splits, please start another thread. Actually, I'd like to discuss it. It is very off topic here though.

Devrim

[Devrim]

While the ICC as a whole does not carry the attitude that Glenn Beck was mocking, I've met several left communists which are guilty of that reactionary notion.

I don't think we hold that notion in any way. What we say is that a revolution must be international, and as such must include the Western working class as a vital element.

Devrim

[RED DAVE]

I hope comrades will forgive me for the incompleteness of this post, but I wanted to make the fundamental point of the relationship of the Left to the labor movement in the 60s.

I haven't contributed much to this thread even though I am one of the few people around here who actually lived through the 60s. And I did so in the United States as an active, conscious international socialist who was involved in the student movement, the civil rights movement, the Ban the Bomb movement, the anti-Vietnam movement, and I was an active trade unionist. I also, through contacts in England and France and personally, directly and indirectly, in struggles abroad.

For those of us who were members of the "Old Left" in the US during the 60s, we were constantly aware of the necessity of linking the various mass movements to the working class, especially the unions. At the beginning of the 60s, this link was present and powerful.

Much of the muscle for the Ban the Bomb movement came from liberal trade unions, many of who were led by ex-Communists and ex- (or luke-warm) socialists. The mass participation in the Civil rights Movement came, in the North, from the unions and from the Black churches, which while led by petit-bourgeois ministers, were working class in membership. In the South, members of unions, such as the Sleeping Car Porters, were active organizers long before the advent of the SCLC and SNCC. There were major strikes in the early 60s, including, I believe, strikes in auto and steel.

However, as the 60s moved on, the liberal leadership of the unions stuck true to their politics and betrayed the mass movements. As the Vietnam War escalated, and mass discontent grew, the labor leadership betrayal became critical. While millions of unionists were against the war, the leadership engaged in abstention or collaboration in order to maintain its relationship with the ruling class, especially in the form of the Democratic Party. One exception was the attempts to organize agricultural workers, whose leadership was explicitly radical, if not Marxist.

By the late 60s, the mass movements were almost completely divorced from organized labor. This led to the kind of excesses seen in the student, student revolutionary and antiwar movements (substitutionism, terrorism), the rise of the Panthers with their semi-explicit orientation toward the black population as a whole (class collaboration) or the lumpen proletariat. There were, as others have pointed out, mass labor actions at that time, culminating in the national postal strike in 1970 and the various movements in the plants, such as DRUM, etc.

The Left influence in the labor movement declined in the 60s as the older generation of militants began to retire. During the 70s, there was a movement on the part of middle-class leftists to enter the working class. In at least one case, that of my own organization at the time, the IS, there was some success, especially in the Teamsters Union (which continues to bear fruit to this day).

All in all, were the 60s worth it. We flung ourselves at the citadels of power, in the US and in East and West Europe and in Asia, Latin American and Africa. We lost. The result was 30 years of bourgeoiis hegemony, which is only now coming to an end.

To you younger comrades: The struggle goes on: Dare to struggle; dare to win."

RED DAVE

[Devrim]

By the late 60s, the mass movements were almost completely divorced from organized labor. This led to the kind of excesses seen in the student, student revolutionary and antiwar movements (substitutionism, terrorism), the rise of the Panthers with their semi-explicit orientation toward the black population as a whole (class collaboration) or the lumpen proletariat. There were, as others have pointed out, mass labor actions at that time, culminating in the national postal strike in 1970 and the various movements in the plants, such as DRUM, etc.


Don't you think that this is somewhat connected to the cross class nature of these movements in the first place?

Devrim

[RED DAVE]

By the late 60s, the mass movements were almost completely divorced from organized labor. This led to the kind of excesses seen in the student, student revolutionary and antiwar movements (substitutionism, terrorism), the rise of the Panthers with their semi-explicit orientation toward the black population as a whole (class collaboration) or the lumpen proletariat. There were, as others have pointed out, mass labor actions at that time, culminating in the national postal strike in 1970 and the various movements in the plants, such as DRUM, etc.
Don't you think that this is somewhat connected to the cross class nature of these movements in the first place?Yes, of course. However, a left-wing leadership in the labor movement and/or a strong left inside the labor movement, this could have been avoided.

A perfect, tragic example, involves the teachers union in New York City. This union was under explicitly social democratic leadership: Albert Shanker, who had as his intellectual whores, the right-Schactmanites (Sschactman's wife was Shanker's secretary). In addition, the civil rights movement in the City was under the strong influence of various socialists and radicals like Bayard Rustin and James Farmer. In the mid-60s, the union backed a one-day school boycott for educational reform by the black community, under the leadership of Reverend Milton Galamison. However, when the boycott failed to produce any changes in the system, Galamison called for a second boycott, which the union leadership failed to back the boycott, thus producing a breach between the black community and the union. The "socialist" civil rights leaders backed the union, opening the way both to genuine radicals and opportunists in the community.

Sometime later, when the issue of community control of the schools was introduced, partially as a genuine attempt at reform and partially as a result of opportunism by black leadership and the Democratic Party in New York, the union went out on strike, essentially against community control (although there were other issues). About 40% of the union, composed of leftists and minority teachers, did not back the strike and went on teaching. It was a fucking nightmare. This produced a complete divorce between the union and the civil rights and black power movements, echoes of which existed for decades.

A truly left-wing leadership of the union (a predecessor union had been Communist-led and had been broken during the 50s), or a more powerful left-wing presence might have avoided this.

RED DAVE

[which doctor]

The anti-Vietnam War movement was as important or more important as the opposition to the imperialist intervention in the Middle East today.
So in other words, it wasn't that important at all?

[Klaatu]

This is a very good PBS documentary, made about 15-20 years ago, and may not be available for sale, but check your local library:

Making Sense of the Sixties
http://www.pbs.org/

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Sixties-Legacies/dp/B00294WTXG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=video&qid=1272341933&sr=8-2

[A.J.]

I think the social-liberalism were a manifestation of the self-indulgent hedonism of the "baby boomer" generation.

Two decades later in the 1980s, this self-indulgence would find it's economic expression in thatcherism and "reaganomics" in Britain and America respectively, as the baby boomers had settled down into comfortable western middle class/labour aristocrat lifestyles.

The sixties weren't just a waste of time but quite reactionary.

[RED DAVE]

The sixties weren't just a waste of time but quite reactionary.Too bad you weren't there. You might think differently if you had been.

What you're talking about is a consequence of the defeat of the mass movements of the 60s and the inability of people as individuals to maintain a "free" lifestyle in the face of capitalist social and economic relations.

RED DAVE

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I think the social-liberalism were a manifestation of the self-indulgent hedonism of the "baby boomer" generation.

Two decades later in the 1980s, this self-indulgence would find it's economic expression in thatcherism and "reaganomics" in Britain and America respectively, as the baby boomers had settled down into comfortable western middle class/labour aristocrat lifestyles.

The sixties weren't just a waste of time but quite reactionary.
This is complete puritanical hair-shirt bullshit. I suppose if they'd all got married in church they would have much more revolutionary potential? FWIW, Thatcherism was founded on a complete backlash against the 60s/70s.